On 03/05/11 23:57, Daniel Worth wrote:
From http://mp3licensing.com/royalty/emd.html
"Note: No license is needed for private, non-commercial activities (e.g.,
home-entertainment, receiving broadcasts and creating a personal music
library), not generating revenue or other consideration of any kind or for
entities with associated annual gross revenue less thatn US $100000.00"
Thanks for that info, I seem to recall there was once a low cost lifetime
licence sold for personal encoding use, I guess they changed that some time ago
or my recollections are mistaken.
Looking at the exception quoted perhaps anyone who uses audio professionally,
say any musician, should avoid using the format to share or keep audio in any
way, since crossing the line out of 'private' by "generating revenue or other
consideration of any kind" is very easy - perhaps from an advertisement on your
website which has an mp3 on it, or playing your mp3 collection from your laptop
in the process of promoting your services as a paid musician. The annual revenue
(note this is not profit, but gross revenue) exception for small 'entities'
would be very easily breached during a reasonable year for a band in many
countries. Then you become a 'pirate' (as a previous poster said) even though
one that is unlikely to be prosecuted if you don't stick your head up to far.
I believe the whole idea that such patents are granted is wrong (and in many
more important cases than this quite damaging), but they are considered valid in
my country.
In any case why encode your content into a format that has these issues when
perfectly reasonable alternatives exist?
Simon.
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